Carmella Felt Pressured To Have A Six-Pack When She Joined WWE

Carmella reflects on the pressure of being a performer.

“The Princess of Staten Island” has been a WWE talent for nearly a decade following time spent as a professional dancer. She’s no stranger to maintaining her physique, but there was a time when she put herself under too much pressure. Carmella recently opened up about dealing with body image issues in a new interview with Yahoo Life.

“There’s a lot of pressure to look your best and be fit and healthy, and I think I was sort of doing it more in an unhealthy way,” Carmella said. “When I look back, I realize I was just so strict with my diet and restricted myself from eating anything and everything that wasn’t vegetables, fruit and lean meats, and that’s just sort of how I lived my life.”

After joining WWE in 2013, she put herself under pressure to achieve six-pack abs and ran herself down.

“When I started out, I had so much pressure like ‘I have to be fit, I want to have a six-pack, I need to keep this up.’ I mean as a wrestler, you need to have a specific physique and look a certain way, and that’s kind of what set me apart too is I always had a defined body and things like that. I tried to keep that up. For a long time I was always lifting heavy weights and tearing my body apart on the road with wrestling. Then when I’m home, I’m lifting weights, and I was just feeling so weak, my body was hurting so much. I did it just because that was what I thought I needed to do because I wanted to project this image. I want everyone to know that I’m fit and I’m healthy and I have a six-pack and things like that.”

Nowadays, Carmella doesn’t put herself under restrictions and “never” weighs herself.

“I look back and I kind of laugh at it because at the point I’m at now I do it for all the right reasons and not because I want people to perceive me a certain way. At this point in my life, I never weigh myself anymore. I do not care about that. I’ve finally gotten to a point where I don’t want to restrict my diet. I don’t want to tell myself I can’t have something. And I feel like now this is the best I’ve ever looked and the best I’ve ever felt because I just am doing what’s right for me and eating intuitively.”